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Video: Tituss Burgess Can't Wait to Join OH, MARY!
Mar 15, 2025
Six-time Emmy Award-nominated actor Tituss Burgess is getting ready to take over the role of ‘Mary Todd Lincoln' in the acclaimed comedy, Oh, Mary! Burgess is the third actor to don the infamous bratty curls. Watch in this video as he chats more about how he is preparing to step into Mary's shoes!
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I molded over a tad and then got to call in December
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And honestly, the first words I said was, . Because I'm like, now I have to do it
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You know what I mean? But I'm so elated. You know, it's rare that a play comes along that allows for the fullness of what I offer and what I house
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And so it doesn't go lost in me. Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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Six-time Emmy Award nominee Titus Burgess is returning to Broadway on March 18th
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stepping into the role of Mary Todd Lincoln in Colos Scola's hilarious new play
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O'Mary, for three weeks only. And I caught up with Titus at the Museum of Broadway
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You're about to return to Broadway in O'Mary. How excited are you? Oh my gosh
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I, you know, when I saw the play about 10 months ago now
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I couldn't divorce Cole's supernova performance from the character. So I went back after I heard a rumor that he wanted me to replace him
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And I was like, oh, come on, there's no way that. you know, there's no way that the show works without what he offers to it
1:04
And what I began to realize was it's just a really good play
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It's very, very good, very well-written, wonderful structure. And I molded over a tad and then got to call in December
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And honestly, the first words I said was, . Because I mean like, no, I have to do it
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You know what I mean? But I'm so elated. You know, it's rare that a play comes along that allows
1:28
for the fullness of what I offer and what I house. And so it doesn't go lost on me
1:34
So talk about rehearsals. So how many weeks? Seven days. You're going to tell me something like that
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Yeah I had seven days to pull it together But I started preparing for this in December I was off by February Wow And I wanted to make sure there no way given the short amount of time that we have
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to put on, to learn the blocking, to learn all the things that go into, what this is
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all the backstage choreography that the audience doesn't see, I couldn't be worried about text
2:06
So I've been preparing for this part of me for about three months now. Yeah. You know, a show like this, like you said
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the backstage track is a show amongst itself. Yes, it is. For an artist who's on the stage all the time in this show
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Yes, yes. So was it easier to learn the text than it was to learn the backstage
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Rig of roll? Well, yeah, because you are only in the theater for like three of those seven days
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Like, people would, they wouldn't believe what we go through to make it look so effortless
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But, but yeah, it was very, I'm still learning it. And I told one of the station, I was like
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can you just stand next to me and shove me where I'm supposed to be? Because I won't remember
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Talk about being in rehearsal. What's it like? Well, it's fast and furious
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And you only have a little bit of time to sort of integrate yourself
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with a pre-existing cast. And you want to try and bring something new to it
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but not also reinvent the will. But again, it's such a fantastic, structurally molded play
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that you just say the text and if you're honest about the circumstances
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it kind of does the work for you. Yeah. The first time you saw yourself all done up is Mary
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What was your reaction when you saw? There she is. I'm a pretty girl, mama. It's really something to see
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You'll quite love it. Because once you see everything I sure that adds so much It brings a different only so far you can go with your physical person and it takes everyone else to draw her out of you
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And once I saw it, it answered a lot of questions for me. Yeah. What's it like living in Cole's world, this beautiful world he's put together
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Cole and I share a similar mind of delusion. And I think that's why, you know, even though we've only met one
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Twice. No, we've only met once, he and I. And we text every night again, but it's a very, it's a
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shorthand, it's a meeting of the minds, and it's honestly a love fest. And I will live inside
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anything Cole wants to build. It is a safe place for people like us
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What I love about the audience coming to this show, it's everybody who's going to see this show
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I mean, the day you went to see, you must have looked around and said, wow, look at the demographics of people are coming to this show
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Yeah, the show and who is in the show playing the parts they play in the show
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does not decide or mandate that a certain type of audience member
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come. Everyone's enjoying this. And I think that's also part of the show's success. It is just
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a wacky, good time. And if you can come and sit your hang-ups at home
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you'll love it. It'll be great. You know, because of all your notoriety
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on television and all, you have a whole new audience on TV, and some of these people may have never seen anything live before
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as we all did when we first started out. What that means to bringing a younger audience
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or a newer audience to live theater? You know, I don't know that I've taken a great deal of time
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to pause to think about that You know that adds it doesn go lost on me that people will follow me specifically into different mediums and where they find me I can always tell in an audience
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where they've happened upon me, if it's on TV or pardon me in the concert world or
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theatrically. But it is always my desire to bring someone along. to see something that they wouldn't otherwise see just because I'm in it
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that they perhaps might leave wanting more of that even if I'm not there
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And so I take that seriously. It doesn't go lost on me
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But I try not to think about it because it is a great deal of pressure, you know, ushering or guiding someone to a thing
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I simply will do it and you decide what you want to do with the information. Yeah
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You know, because we all remember seeing somebody that we knew from television or film. before I even knew that they did this stuff live. Exactly
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That was definitely for me when, you know, I would watch the greats of Bernadette Peters and Carol Burnett and all this, you know, people growing up, I was just like, oh, they also do this other thing
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And Bernardette Peters is how I happened upon Steve Sondheim and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera
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You always return to the theater. Tell me why. It is the safest place I know on earth
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for me. Yeah. While being on stage can be quite nerve-wrecking and terribly hard on the central
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narrative system, the construct of theater, theater people, theater language, the music
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the structures. It is church, it is my sanctuary, it is God
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